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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25554442">Chez Alex</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/moo_said_the_cow/pseuds/moo_said_the_cow'>moo_said_the_cow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alex is learning, Fluff, Gen, Spyfest 2020 (Alex Rider), Yassen bakes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:26:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,252</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25554442</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/moo_said_the_cow/pseuds/moo_said_the_cow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck in quarantine, Alex decides to try baking. Enter his sourdough starter Brad (short for Bread). Can Scorpia’s newest and youngest member fit in, or are Alex and Brad about to get chucked out onto the street? (Eviction moratoriums do not apply to Scorpia). </p><p>Set rather loosely in The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea universe by pongnosis. This is probably OOC for Devil!Alex and Yassen, but, hey, who hasn't become a little out of their usual character because of quarantine?!</p><p>Prompt: quarantined and bored: a deadly combination.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Chez Alex</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alex, Saigatta and Yassen had been staying in the Long Island vacation home they were currently in for the last three months, plotting and then carrying out a convoluted plan to take down of the largest hedge funds in the world and its executives. They had completed the mission with great success, Yassen had been pleased, and the client had paid them in full, with the promise of more jobs in the future. Unfortunately for the team, it was April by this point, and the novel coronavirus was simply everywhere — airports were closed, flights canceled, and no country wanted to accept travelers from the United States. Even the neighbors on Long Island were giving them the evil eye — were the unknown folks in their Chevy suburbans with the tinted windows recent arrivals from coronavirus-ravaged New York City?</p><p>To avoid attracting unwanted attention, and for their own safety, Yassen had ordered the team to stay put in the house. Only two people were allowed to leave each week, and only for groceries and essentials. As such, Alex sat at the kitchen island as he had done every morning for the last month, sipping from a glass of water and wondering what to do with the rest of his day. Yassen had insisted weeks ago that Alex spend at least eight hours a day studying and writing various reports for things, but even that work had dried up. It was apparent that the worldwide lockdowns were bad for the economy and thus Scorpia’s business, and for the first time in its long history, Scorpia was not actively plotting to assassinate someone or toppling a government somewhere.</p><p>Alex scrolled aimlessly through Reddit on his phone, hoping for inspiration to strike. And eventually, inspiration did strike with Item 5134 on the homepage. r/Breaddit. Alex was utterly mesmerized by the picture of a beautiful, golden loaf of sourdough bread, to the point where he could feel saliva starting to pool in his mouth. Suddenly, Alex was determined to start the rest of his days in quarantine by baking fresh sourdough bread for everyone. </p><p>Two hours of research later, Alex had plotted out a schedule for his sourdough. He would get up at 3am to knead the dough, workout while the dough did its final rise, stick the dough in the oven, and if it all went to plan, breakfast would be ready at the same time he would be done with his shower. Alex stumbled across his first challenge moments later, when he read a post on the same subreddit complaining about how all the stores were out of flour. Alex briefly considered having Crux procure some flour from the kitchen at Malagosto, but there was the issue of customs and he had a feeling Scorpia would take the cost of shipping and handling from his paycheck if they were to sneak the flour into the US. In the end, Alex was able to place an order with a restaurant supply store in the New York City area that sold and delivered flour by the pallet, and he was able to get the rest of the equipment on Amazon.</p><p>It was a week later when all Alex’s purchases finally showed up. Yassen had raised an eyebrow when he saw the five 10 gallon buckets that Alex had ordered to store his sourdough starter, but he did not comment. Alex — now eighteen and a lot more comfortable with not having to fill in silence — decided that there was absolutely nothing wrong with making bread and ignored the many pointed looks Yassen gave him, choosing instead to continue mixing the water and flour in the buckets to feed his starter.</p>
<hr/><p>Yassen was slightly bothered by whatever Alex’s new hobby was, and slightly more bothered by the fact that he did not know what Alex was trying to achieve. 10 gallon buckets, a literal ton of flour, weighing scales, water, some sort of woven baskets, razor blades… Whatever he was mixing smelt musky and vaguely resembled paint. Yassen was reasonably sure that this had nothing to do with any of the textbooks that Alex had been reading recently, and it probably had nothing to do with making explosive devices of any sort, except the razor blades left Yassen a little thrown. Was he trying to drywall his room? A while ago and Yassen would have snooped through Alex’s internet history to figure it out, but Alex was older now, and Yassen did not really want to know what else Alex was looking up in his free time. This didn’t look <em>too</em> dangerous, after all. Yassen just hoped that he would get to see the security deposit on the house again.</p>
<hr/><p>Another week later, and Alex’s starter was bubbling happy in its bucket and rapidly expanding in size, a sure sign that it was ready to be turned into dough. Alex had in a blog somewhere that he should be treating his starter like a pet, and to be thankful and make good use of all the bubbly presents — aka discard — it produced. Now, he mentally thanked Brad (he wasn’t sure when he had decided to name it Brad, but the name fit) as he dumped half of Brad (was Brad still Brad if half of it was gone?) onto the kitchen counter and prepared to start making the dough.</p><p>Kneading turned out to be harder than Alex expected. Alex was now thirty minutes into dragging the dough back and forth along the kitchen counter, but the dough was being really wet and annoying, adhering to the countertop and his hands like wet glue and leaving a sticky trail all along the surface. Alex was just starting to wonder who in Saigatta he could delegate this task to when he felt Yassen come up behind him.</p><p>“Did you know making bread could be this hard?” It was past midnight, Alex’s hands were covered with strings of wet dough, and he felt like it was justified to be a little cranky.</p><p>“It's not.” Yassen went over to the sink to wash his hands before coming over to where Alex was. He looked a little bemused. “At least, it’s not supposed to be. Your kneading technique is all wrong. Let me…”</p><p>Alex watched as Yassen deftly manipulated the dough for a couple of minutes before dropping it carefully it into an empty bucket to rise. “Wow. How did you do that?”</p><p>Yassen shrugged slightly. He didn’t say anything for a long while, and Alex was afraid that the question was too personal. “I grew up in a small village,” he finally said. “My grandmother taught me. She would get up early every morning to make bread for the family. Not sourdough, but — similar enough.”</p><p>This was the first time that Yassen had ever brought up his family, and Alex felt a little wrong-footed. He didn’t trust himself with a verbal response beyond a quiet hum of acknowledgement and decided to busy himself by cleaning up the kitchen. Yassen joined him after a while.</p><p>It was Yassen who broke the silence again, when they were almost done. “It’s the first time in almost thirty years I’ve done this,” he admitted. “Surprised I can still remember. It’s not exactly a skill that comes in often in our line of work… until 2020 happened.” His eyes — slightly amused — found Alex's. “We’ll be here for at least another month. I hope I can trust you to not give any of us food poisoning in the meantime.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was the SpyFest 2020 Week 2 prompt but since we’re still in some phase of quarantine where I am, deadlines and rules don’t really apply, right? 😇 </p><p>And yes, I'm not sorry that Saigatta does not have any purpose in this story, besides for Alex to justify that it's perfectly ok to buy a pallet of flour and have it delivered to his residence, hide it in the garage and not offer any (even at a huge markup, Dr Three would definitely disapprove of Alex's lack of business acumen if he finds out) to his flour-deprived neighbors.</p><p>This was originally supposed to about how Alex gave his team and Yassen food poisoning with his terrible cooking skills, there's a war over who gets to use the bathrooms, and the Scorpia bureaucracy is Very Upset because their health insurance coverage in the US isn't great and it will cost them a pretty penny, but I guess Yassen stepping in to save the day works as well 🙃</p></blockquote></div></div>
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